The Final Girls

The Final Girls –

The Final Girls is another slasher spoof with a fun premise; a group of teens escape a burning movie theater by escaping into the movie world through a dimensional portal in the silver screen.  Unfortunately for them the movie they escape into is Camp Bloodbath, a slasher flick with low IQ and a high body count.  Although the setup is promising the uneven execution leaves something to be desired.  The movie’s main protagonist lost her mother to a tragic car crash in real life, a mother who happens to play one of the characters in the movie.  While the interactions with the cast of the movie Camp Bloodbath are the films highlights, the emotional anchor and drama of the protagonist and obvious final girl’s touching moments with her deceased mother buck the comedy elements of the script, making it much more of a touching Lifetime-esque cable TV drama than a slasher-based comedy.  The boob jokes land, but the sad and poignant discussions about life and death and letting go of our loved ones casts a shade on the entire movie.  The horror nerd comedy sidekick of the group gets killed by the slasher early on in the movie while they are trying to figure out the rules of the movie world, and whether anything there actually represents a threat to them.  This makes living through the movie a much more terrifying aspect for the people involved.  Can you imagine really being stuck in a Friday the 13^th movie, knowing you could be the next to die?  You’d be shitting yourself, which is essentially what these characters do.  

The “mean girl” has the revelation that she is a “mean girl” and probably won’t survive the night according to horror movie rules, so she says her good byes to her friends before the final battle kicks off.  Seems like there were a lot of these sadder moments in the movie that were never truly balanced by the comedy and horror; its tone is kind of all over the place.  Ultimately I’d recommend it for a laugh or two, but at the end of the day slasher comedy movies aren’t really my thing.   I did enjoy the The Burning movie poster homage, but beyond that there wasn’t a lot of slasher movie Easter Eggs to be found.  Camp Bloodbath is obviously a play on Friday the 13^th.  I did enjoy the way it ended by leading into a sequel slasher, in a hospital none the less.  Hello Halloween 2!  I’d check it out, some of the comedy does work well, just ignore the gushy drama.